Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Digital leaders understand that ultimate mastery of leadership does not exist. The path to mastery is something that unfolds day by day. Leadership is about future and change, innovation and influence. The intention of becoming a leader is to inspire and innovate, to improve and advance, to facilitate and encourage, as change is often uncomfortable, yet necessary part of reaching the future and maintaining success. Digital makes everything so transparent, and dynamic, it raises the leadership bar as well. The digital leadership effectiveness is not based on how loud you can speak, or how skillful you can control, but how profound you can influence, and how insightful you can perceive, to touch both hearts and connect minds. Here are three differentiators in digital leadership.

Eager: Leaders inspire people to think about and reach for what can be. Becoming a leader is a process of becoming your true authentic self in all that you are today and "to be" in the future. Being a leader can on occasion feel isolating, however, by following your instinct you will more often than not turn the situation around and produce a positive outcome. So rather than looking for examples of leaders out there, look within yourself and ask: Why do you want to lead? Which gaps can you fill? Why should others follow you? Being a leader takes one to have the eager to drive changes and a desire to do better than others in certain domains while creating themselves a platform of influence in wherever they are. A great leader is a confident person who will welcome debates and do their utmost to understand and embrace another viewpoint. A leader with eager has the courage to take risks and has the vision to see further. Digital leaders are great visionaries. They possess an innate potential to transform vision into reality and become the true source of inspiration and motivation for success. Effective leaders have eager to change, facilitate progress and encourage innovation.

Exploring: There is no one size fits all leadership formula. Leadership is the adventure to explore unknown, test the uncharted water and take the different path. It’s the journey to help unleash the unlimited human potential. Either being a digital leader or digital professional today, it is not sufficient to do transactional tasks only, you have to continue learning, growing, exploring, innovating and achieve more. There is a clear vision, but there are alternative ways to get there via exploring the art of possible. A highly innovative organization is surrounded by high-potential people who take on new challenges at work, rapidly learn and grow into next-level roles, keep exploring for expanding the horizon with growth minds, and they either demonstrate the positive attitude, abundant curiosity, or constructive criticism to build a healthy or even creative workplace.

Expertise: Nowadays commodity knowledge is only a click away, and the mix of signals and noises make the business world over complex and hyper-risky. Digital leaders today needs to be highly intelligent and highly influential. The qualitative leaders must be very open to knowledge, desire for insight, and hunt for wisdom. It's important to keep the ingredients fresh by investing in professional development regularly. At the hyper-connected digital era, to break down stereotypical biases or any types of career ceilings, continuous delivery, expert power, and dynamic digital footprint become the very significant part of being “who you are,” And the digital platforms can condense your strength to amplify your leadership influence effortlessly.

People are complex, businesses are complex, the world is complex, and leadership is complex. The future of leaders has to deal with opposing views, paradox, diverse cultures, constraints, and competition. Digital leaders have to continually practicing, experiencing, learning, sharing, adapting, exploring, innovating and maturing, and they understand that ultimate mastery of leadership does not exist. The path to mastery is something that unfolds day by day.